Thursday, 21st March, 2019

4 dead, 200 injured as powerful typhoon in Japan

R A SUJON

A powerful typhoon swept through the Japanese archipelago Sunday through Monday, leaving at least four people dead and 200 others injured while disrupting traffic in wide areas including Tokyo during morning rush hours.

Typhoon Trami rapidly traversed eastern and northern parts of the largest main island of Honshu after making landfall in western Japan the previous night, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The typhoon, the season’s 24th, downgraded to an extratropical cyclone off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido, the northernmost main island, by Monday afternoon.

It widely disrupted morning commuter traffic in the capital region, forcing public transportation operators to shut down their services Sunday in central, eastern and western Japan. The resumption of services in the capital was delayed Monday morning for safety checks and falling trees.

Four people died in the prefectures of Yamanashi, Shiga, Kyoto and Tottori, while one person went missing in Miyazaki, according to local authorities.

In Tottori, western Japan, a 50-year-old truck driver was killed by a landslide. Meanwhile, a man was found in a river and later confirmed dead in Yamanashi, west of Tokyo.

Injuries were reported in 30 of the country’s 47 prefectures, according to a tally by Kyodo News,

At one point, more than 1 million homes across the country suffered power outage due to damage on transmission system.

Major train stations in the metropolitan area were overcrowded in the morning as services remained disrupted following massive cancellations since the day before, while many flights were canceled through Monday.

A train on the Keio Line collided with a wall that had collapsed over a railway in the capital’s Setagaya Ward around 4:45 a.m. None of its 70 passengers were injured, and its operator Keio Corp. resumed services about four hours later.

More than 910,000 people were affected by cancellations and delays of nearly 1,300 conventional train services and of 10 shinkansen bullet train services by JR East.